


The Cave

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: A whole lot of random AU's so that's exciting, Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble Collection, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:58:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1929303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because, y'know, why <i>not</i> write a bunch of Propunk drabbles to "The Cave" by Mumford & Sons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's empty in the valley of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> Each drabble is 100 words precisely. Some of them are about Sarah, some of them are about Rachel, some of them are about Sarah-and-Rachel. Some of them are related to the lyrics that inspired them, some of them are if you _squint_. It's a Propunk cornucopia. Enjoy.

Sometimes Sarah wonders if she could have _ever_ been Rachel – Rachel, whose sincerity still rings hollow, who has never cried _once_ as long as Sarah has known her, who sometimes watches Sarah with a birdlike head tilt when Sarah’s emoting especially strongly.

She can’t imagine not being able to feel.

Then again, she can’t imagine not having a family – that space in your heart where your loved ones should be empty, burned out, a building shell where a bomb has dropped.

Take away Felix, Siobhan, _Kira_ …maybe. Could be.

Sarah doesn’t want to think about it. Doesn’t want to even imagine.


	2. The sun, it rises slowly as you walk/Away from all the fears/And all the faults you've left behind

Sarah’s young, the first time she runs. Young enough to not make it very far, to come back to Mrs. S’ house with her shoulders hunched, eyes surly; young enough to be frightened by rain, the way it smeared eyeshadow down her face.

She gets better. Flies farther. Flies faster. Nothing weighs her down – no fears, no faults – just all the money she lines her pockets with.

This time when she leaves, she waits for sun. It rises as she walks away from all of her many, many failures, and her shadow stretches in front of her like an omen.


	3. The harvest left no fruit for you to eat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an AU!

Sarah can see the Morrigan from where she’s lying on the battlefield, leaking guts from her side. She thinks about the crow feathers in her hair. Thinks about fealty. Watches the war-goddess picking her neat way across all the corpses.

Then the Morrigan’s over _her_ , the wide flare of crow wings, her eyes glittering black in her white-skin-red-lips battlefield face.

She tilts her head, birdlike, and lays her hands on Sarah’s stomach.

“I’m not satisfied,” she says coolly, as Sarah gasps, groans, feels intimately the pain of her stomach stitching itself back up. “I want more from you, Sarah Manning.”


	4. You cannibal, you meat-eater, you see

Rachel bites viciously at Sarah’s skin like she’s trying to mark her permanent, gnaws at Sarah’s lips and licks blood from them, thirsty, desperate. Sarah slides out of bed in the morning to find bruises dappling her skin and feels like nothing as much as she feels like an offering to some cannibalistic hunger-thing.

Rachel’s teeth are the same as her own (that’s kind of the point of the whole thing)…so how can they be so _sharp?_

Rachel’s heart is the same as her own (that’s kind of the point of the whole thing)…so how can she be so _hungry?_


	5. But I have seen the same/I know the shame in your defeat

_Creature of Dyad_ , Siobhan said, the voice of a thousand small cautions, the voice of Sarah’s protector.

But Sarah’s grown out of that, and Siobhan can’t be trusted, and Sarah knows what it’s like, to think your family’s gone. She watched her mother die at her sister’s hand. She watched her sister die at her hand, and watched her sister rise—

The point is: her mother died, and she got a resurrection from it. Rachel Duncan deserves precisely shit from her, but Sarah can’t – not in good conscience – hold this secret over her head.

She’s not Rachel. She won’t _lie._


	6. And I will hold on hope/And I won't let you choke

_You’re an idiot,_ a little voice whispers in the back of Sarah’s head, but her fingers are steady on the gun and she concentrates on the trembling sound of Rachel’s breathing behind her to drown it out.

 _Worked on Helena,_ she mutters to herself as she barks steady threats to the man on the other side of the gun.

Scornful laughter from the back of her head. Yeah, she knew that was a long shot.

 _I can’t_ , she thinks, sour. _I can’t let her die, okay? I just can’t._

A pause.

_She’d let you die, in her place._

_I know._


	7. On the noose around your neck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an AU!

Rachel watches the gallows go up and thinks about _justice_ with a sick low burn in the bottom of her stomach. The thief stumbles as she’s led to the waiting noose and Rachel lets out a sharp, hot little breath, watches reverently as the rope’s lowered around the other woman’s neck.

The thief – the _criminal_ – matches the gallow-crows, painted in shades of black, and Rachel loves her the way she loves everyone who’s led to the platform to die.

She loves them because soon they will be a corpse. _Justice_. She doesn’t know a lovelier word in all the world.


	8. And I'll find strength in pain

Rachel stares at her marred reflection in the mirror and then presses, firmly, against the bruise blooming on her face. Stupid of her, to let Sarah get that close – close enough to lay hands on her, stupid, _stupid_.

She won’t make that mistake again.

Carefully she works at concealing the bruise, hiding it away, and she thinks with a low bitterness that there are a _lot_ of mistakes she won’t be making again.

Sarah Manning, she thinks coolly, had better run far and had better run fast. She has made a bigger mistake than Rachel has: she’s made Rachel _angry_.


	9. And I will change my ways

Aldous lied to her. They _all_ lied.

Rachel makes the call.

Then she makes another call, and begins to slowly move her chess pieces around the board – again: slowly. Can’t let topside know how deep the betrayal’s gone, how the tremors are cracking Rachel open.

She opens some channels for Cosima (knight). Conveniently lets Alison (rook)’s contract slip into a paper trail, untraceable.

Then she holds her phone for one beat, two. Presses _call_.

“Yeah?” says Sarah on the other line, with the rough confusion of an unrecognized number, and Rachel lets her eyes flutter closed. Thinks: _queen._ Thinks: _check_.


	10. I'll know my name as it's called again

_Rachel_ in Sarah’s voice is the most beautiful thing Rachel’s ever heard, she thinks, listening to it fall out of Sarah’s mouth like ripe fruit as Rachel fucks her with the curve of her fingers, lavishes bites around the pillar of her neck.

 _Rachel, Rachel, Rachel_ ; Sarah learns fast, how much Rachel likes it, how much Rachel likes hearing her own name in her own voice, stretched out and distorted with arousal, _Rachel Rachel Rachel Rachel Rachel_.

 _Yes_ , she thinks, with something like pride and something like smugness and something like her own matching ember of arousal, burn burn burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rachel Duncan/Rachel Duncan OTP.


	11. 'Cause I have other things to fill my time

They leave Sarah in her cell for a dizzyingly empty stretch of time – Sarah thinks _days_ , thinks _weeks_ , but can’t know for certain, not with her meals erratic and no window to track the sun.

Rachel enters the small, stale little room after Sarah’s voice has begun to rust from disuse, after she’s stopped punching the walls and kicking the door and has almost stopped thinking entirely.

“I’m so sorry for the wait,” she says insincerely, fluttering her eyelashes and smiling like a liar. “Unfortunately, there were more…pressing projects.”

The both of them know this: that is utter, complete bullshit.


	12. You take what is yours and I'll take mine

Kira is rightfully _Rachel’s_ daughter. Rachel was the original, Rachel was the heir to the program, _Rachel_ wants to be a mother so desperately that it eats her alive.

So she snatches Kira from her cradle and…takes. For lack of a better word. _Mine_ pounds at her breastbone like another heart.

Then Sarah takes _back_ , takes Kira and an eye besides. But taking from Rachel just makes her hungrier, doesn’t it? Sarah was stupid to leave her alive. Sarah was stupid to think she deserves _anything_.

Rachel lies there on the floor and thinks about making the whole world blind.


	13. Now let me at the truth/Which will refresh my broken mind

Rachel’s father is alive.

Her mind begins to shatter – call it a paradigm shift. Reach into a psychological textbook and pick a term at random; it’ll certainly fit. The point is this: she cannot preserve the image of her father with the man in the chair. She cannot preserve _herself_ while Ethan Duncan looks at her, sees the child she left burning in the laboratory on her skin like a film negative.

She will fall apart. This is inevitable.

But, she thinks as she walks (slow) to Aldous’ office, she’ll take as many people as she can down with her.


	14. So tie me to a post and block my ears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an AU!

The witch cackles as she burns.

It’s disconcerting.

Of course Sarah _knew_ that was going to happen – she’s read the books, sure, same as anyone – but she isn’t expecting the loud, giddy laughter, the high whoops of hysteria.

She also isn’t expecting the way the witch locks eyes with Sarah the whole time, her grin all fangs as she burns. She seems nothing but delighted, a sea change from the sharp, cold woman Sarah had relentlessly hunted down.

 _Maybe she needed fire to thaw her_ , Sarah thinks shakily, with a tinge of laughter, and wonders distantly if hysteria is contagious.


	15. I can see widows and orphans through my tears

There’s a database, of all of them. Sarah flips through it, numb, and watches the way the word _Deceased_ blurs through her tears. Repeat a word long enough and it doesn’t sound like a word; maybe if she says it out loud, repeatedly, it will stop being true.

 _Deceased._ All these girls with no family too. She wonders how many of them had people in their lives who weren’t monitors. She wonders how many she could have saved, _if_.

Then she repeats a mantra to herself, _Alison Cosima Helena,_ her family, everyone she’s managed to save.

Then she walks away.


	16. I know my call despite my faults/And despite my growing fears

Sarah holds her daughter in her arms and feels the world shudder to rightness, click into place. _Oh_ , she thinks, the sound like a bell pealing in her head. _Oh_.

She didn’t realize that being a mother was having a purpose, but now that she can feel Kira’s heartbeat she _knows_ , bone-deep, that they’re the same.

 _I would fight worlds for you_ , she thinks to the tiny body she cradles in her arms. She watches Kira’s fist clench open and shut and makes a fist of her own. _If you need me, little girl, little monkey girl, I’ll do anything._


	17. So come out of your cave walking on your hands/And see the world hanging upside down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doozy of a title.

They all stare as Rachel walks through the door to Felix’s apartment, and she holds her head high and stares right back. _I know you_ , she thinks, _why you reach for wine bottles, the exact sound you make when you orgasm, where on your neck to plunge the needle, I_ know _you._

She says none of that. Instead she watches them watch her and thinks suddenly how _strange_ they are, all of them, with their bald curiosity and disgust. What a curious thing it is, to wear your emotions so nakedly.

It’s like they’re from another world. A truer one.


	18. You can understand dependence

Rachel says _take off your shirt_ with her eyes glittering feverishly, with some sort of animal panic. Sarah thinks of Rachel-after-Dyad, the way her hands fumble on her own teapot, the way her hands fumble on her own nail polish brushes, the way her hands fumble.

She thinks about knowing that someone is going to be there to obey you, always, should you need to be obeyed.

Slowly, she takes off her shirt. Rachel walks forward one step, two steps, and kisses her; Sarah thinks maybe she can taste the _thank you_ on Rachel’s tongue, peppery and bitter and sincere.


	19. When you know the maker's land

_A unique vantage, one with privilege_.

The “privilege” is this: she watches her…sisters scurry beneath her, like rats. Sees their tiny lives laid out in lab reports and sheets of data. With their bones reduced to typeface, their skin to photographs in her hands, Rachel feels like a god.

(The exception: Sarah Manning, who is a ghost in the wind, who is the nonbeliever. Rachel doesn’t realize she’s grown dependent on data for truths until she reaches for Sarah’s and realizes that she has none of it.

What makes her different? What makes her _special_ , and why can’t Rachel _know?_ )


	20. So make your siren's call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an AU!
> 
> Inspired by [this](http://sharkodactyl.tumblr.com/post/77829930368).

Rachel, tied to the post, is sickeningly angry with herself for thinking she was the _one person_ who could resist the siren’s song. Rachel _Duncan,_ reduced to a snarling animal lunging at the ropes tying her to the ship’s mast, reduced to _desperation_.

But she can’t help herself – the song is dark and deep as ocean water, something about disobeying rules, not being what everyone expects from you, the joy of running, the taste of blood in the water.

A head suddenly bobs out of the water, hair tangled and dark as seaweed.

She’s grinning.

Her teeth are very sharp.


	21. And sing all you want

Sarah starts snarling some threadbare rock anthem midway through her second (third? fourth? possibly Rachel has had too many classes of wine) beer, her voice rough and dark and somehow joyous, underneath all that anger.

Rachel doesn’t quite understand it, how their voices can do that, and she _especially_ doesn’t understand it when intoxicated. She likes it, though. She doesn’t know why, but she does, the unfamiliarity of it.

Then Sarah trails off and Rachel blurts “No” before she can stop herself.

“Keep singing,” she says, slightly horrified with herself, her eyes just as wide and confused as Sarah’s own.


	22. I will not hear what you have to say

“I’ve suffered just as much as you,” Rachel says, her eyes wide and twitch-twitch-twitching, “please, neither of us is at fault.”

Sarah’s hands tighten on the gun. She thinks about Delphine, sent to Frankfurt; thinks about the blood on Cosima’s sheets; thinks about Alison’s signature and the way it didn’t shake on the contract; thinks about Kira. Thinks about Kira.

“You had your chance,” she says, cold. “You had fifty bloody chances, Rachel, and you fucked ‘em all up.”

Realization dawns in Rachel’s eyes and she opens her mouth to say something, some final desperate gambit.

Sarah pulls the trigger.


	23. ‘Cause I need freedom now/And I need to know how/To live my life as it's meant to be

She gets an apartment, somewhere in the sun. A nice job – not a good one, not _as_ good, but good enough to keep her buying nice watches, nicer skirts.

On the weekends she meets with her sisters. Eventually she finds their company less inane; eventually, she even learns to enjoy it.

She’s happy. It takes time, but she learns how to be happy.

(The bullet’s lodged in her chest; she coughs up blood, a hacking spasm.

She wonders how she ever thought she could be free of the Dyad. She wonders how she thought she could ever be that stupid.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please leave kudos + comment if you enjoyed. Thanks!


End file.
